The BIG Jay Sean Interview!
What is your first musical memory?
It was an Indian film. One of my favourite Indian films I used to watch when I was three years old. I actually do remember singing the words to the song, I don't remember them now but I remember that I always used to play the same part and sing it. It was a film about some Indian guy from the village and he became a superstar in India and I think that's probably my idol, I'm sure somewhere in my subconscious I wanted to be him.
Is that something you related to?
I'm Indian and the Bollywood film industry is the biggest film industry in the world they have hundreds of films coming out ever year and any Asian family will have an Indian channel on sky which plays these films so we grew up watching them.
What was the first album you remember buying?
This is so bad: Michael Bolton, I don't know why, I think I just really liked one of the songs.
What music first inspired you?
Hip-Hop, definitely Hip Hop. Although I grew up listening to my Aunt's Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson ‘Off the Wall’, very sort of early days, but i remember passionately going into hip-hop when I was 12 years old, me and my cousin, we really got into it. That was when I started rapping, when I was thirteen years old, that's because I was just so fascinated by the hip-hop culture and I just wanted to be able to do it.
Who were your heroes at that point?
It would have been people like Fushnikins, Naughty by Nature, even Jay-Z when he was in Original Flavor, it was that kind of era, Big L, loads of the underground.
Are they still your idols now?
I will always look at them as up here (raises arm) as that is where my style developed, I can say that. I was more fascinated by the vocal tricks that they could do in terms of the flow, like Treach from Naughty by Nature and Fushnikins they'd do all this double time rapping and I was just like, how do you move your mouth so fast? I practised all of that, that's where I got my hip-hop style from, all that double time style and that's kind of something that's stuck with me, so I'll always look at them.
In terms of now, I'm looking at people like Eminem, for me, he's the Don, what he has achieved from being this white kid growing up amongst black people all around him, black music. In America they're a lot harder than they are here; in Hip-Hop if you don't cut it, then forget it. It's some little white kid who wants to be a big-time rapper, and it's a dream and it's come true for him, because he's got the skills and he's got the necessary mind frame, he's on point and he cuts it- I respect that.
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About Petrol Records
About Petrol Records
